


Eulogy of Brian Thomas

by kebwins



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Character Death, Gen, canon character death, eulogy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:26:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28209033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kebwins/pseuds/kebwins
Summary: Tim has to give a Eulogy for his fallen friend, Brian
Kudos: 1





	Eulogy of Brian Thomas

**Author's Note:**

> Please Comment and Kudos, and as always Enjoy!  
> Also Mrs Thomas is 100% based on KR19's Mama Thomas

Tim was shaking and he didn’t know why, either for the anticipation of getting up and doing this or the worry over the judgment as to why he was the one giving this speech in their ‘wonderful’ Alabama town. There were multiple reasons why those who don’t know him well wouldn’t like him giving this speech, one of them being that he wasn’t straight and he wasn’t ‘right in the head’ as he heard many say while he just sat there and stared at the empty casket before them. He already had agreed to do this for Mrs. Thomas though, he couldn’t back down now as much as it hurt him to know that Brian isn’t there with them anymore and they don’t even know where his body is after.

He took a deep breath as he quickly tried to erase that image from his mind, the image of their dead eyes looking right at him, even if he couldn’t recall some of the victims clearly anymore. With a nervous twitch he turned the empty pill bottle over in his hands, one last thing he had been able to take back from those he had been close to, though also something that had been stolen from him before the end. Just something that wasn’t a tape or a camera to remind him of what he had lost.   
“Tim dear are you ready?” A woman nearing her sixties asked him with the kindest smile on her face that just barely hid her pain, a smile that if the pain wasn’t there and evident on her face he would have mistaken her for his friend at first.  
“You don’t have to do this if you aren’t feeling up for it you know”  
“No… No, I want to” He croaked out slowly while looking up at her and wondering how she can be so strong “I…. I need to for them…”  
She smiled sweetly at him and gently messed up his hair just like _he_ used to, a habit that he finally knows where his friend got it from along with all of his other traits.  
“Thank you for telling me about my son, don’t lock yourself up anymore though ok? You need to remember to let yourself feel things Timothy” she said gently to him  
“I will…. Thank you, Mrs. Thomas”  
“It’s Mom to you dear, you are as much of a son to me as Brian is…. Was”  
He nodded slowly, a part of him still wanted to say it was still “is” but it’s been over four years since Brian disappeared from their lives and just under a year since Tim learned of what happened to his old roommate. With a small encouraging sigh, he stood up and brushed whatever dust had fallen on his plain black hand-me-down suit away. Eyes stared at him as he limped his way up to the front of the room where the casket laid empty. Nervously he fiddled with his note cards in his hands before he looked out at nothing and took another breath and finally began to speak.  
“I-i remember the first day I met Brian. It is a funny story if you look back on it… but at the time, and years later where I w-would look back on that day, I can’t help but blush at how he had found me... We met on our first day of college, I, never really having friends before, and was already overwhelmed with the thought of having a roommate, and him being the social sunshine that he is, scared me. The smiles he gave me the moment I walked into our room with the little things I had.”

He didn’t know why he chose this personal story to share with them tonight, he had so many others that he could have shared or just something faster to get this speech over with. Though when he thought about Brian, and what he would do if the other wasn’t gone. This is a story he would have told at the other’s wedding if he was lucky enough to be chosen as the other best man or just a funny story to tell if they got over the unaccepting nature of their own. He wasn’t going to think about that when there was no hope left to give for a future relationship. There was no future where that would be possible anymore.

“How he immediately took what I was holding from me and set them down on what he had deemed my side of the room, g-giving me the window instead of the wall like I had thought he would... But his smile was blinding and the moment he spoke to me I completely lost any train of thoughts that I had and was just so overwhelmed by having this person be my roommate for the next year of my life, o-or for whenever he had gotten sick of me, that I began to hyperventilate.”    
Tim tried his hardest to remember that day and how Brian’s smile was for him, but all he can see now is those cold eyes staring at him and a sly smirk still on his face before the black mask replaces even that, along with red eyes with a red frown, just stared back at him. He could hear himself scream at him that he was going to kill him only for that to be taken over by the sound of a loud thud of the masked man’s body hitting the floor below the window, Brian’s body hitting the floor before it was taken away from him. His hands shook as much as his voice was and he had to take a long pause just to breathe so he could get the rest of his words out.

“I couldn’t breathe at all because this person who I hadn’t even learned the name of was nice to me, was smiling at me, had been considerate for me, and I was already worried about messing that all up. When I first met Brian he took my breath away, and he gave it back more easily than any of the many medical professionals I have ever been around. He wrapped me up in this weighted blanket he had, held me close to his chest so that I, a stranger, could listen to his heartbeat and use that to regulate my own, while he got calm meditation music to play in our room. And I couldn’t have asked for a better friend during my years at college. I couldn’t ask for a better person to have had in my life for as long as I did, one that got me out of my shell, introduced me to more friends, got me comfortable with kindness like I always should have been.”   
The story, like Brian, had ended and that was what he wanted to remember Brian by. Not as the man who ran around in the woods with a mask on and stalked him while also stealing his medication. Not the paranoid one who left Jay little clips and codes to decipher. Not the one the other “Tim” followed so loyally. No, he wanted to remember the one who made him feel safe from day one, the one who encouraged them all to try new things and whose goal had always been to bring a smile to someone’s face.

“Thank you” Mrs. Thomas whispered to Tim once he finally walked away from the podium, her face wet with newly shed tears as she pulled him into a tight hug “Thank you so much…. For sharing that piece of Brian with us… I…. I really needed it so thank you”

He could barely respond to her as he just nodded along to what she said while his mind drifted off. He just lets her hug him and cry while he finally learns to breathe again, something he had somehow forgotten during the duration of the speech, and slowly his tears fall from his eyes as his arms wrapped around her tightly and he sobbed in her arms.

Brian was gone

Brian was truly gone and he wasn’t ever going to be coming back, and he was part of that reason for his death, him, and that thing that had changed all of them. That horrible faceless thing.

He didn’t know how long he and Mrs. Thomas had hugged each other for, could have been hours, or only a few seconds. He didn’t even know when she stopped hugging him or how he got to where he currently was, sitting in a chair with her arm around his shoulder, as the only other survivor of his once large group of friends speaks.

“Jay Merrick was an amazing friend, an amazing guy. Someone who wouldn’t let their friends disappear without a word, no matter how insane they seemed to have gotten. He was the type of person who would protect you above all else even if he never met you before” She said and quickly Tim felt his heart clench with pain at the memories it brought back to him.

“And I would know because he protected me despite having no memory of who I was or what we were doing there in that hotel we woke up in. He protected me and searched for me even as his mind failed him and his once best friend betrayed him… Jay Merrick was an amazing friend and would have been an amazing detective too. During his last few moments, he might have had a few hinges lose or something else wrong with him, with how attached he was to his camera…. -”

Tim couldn’t listen to the rest of whatever she had to stay as he quietly whispered to Mrs. Thomas “I need some air” before he quickly ran out of the building. He didn’t know how far he went, or really where he was going, not that he ever really knew that. He walked until he felt like he couldn’t anymore and only then did he sit down at the base of the tree just so that he could breathe. His eyes closed tightly as he just let his thoughts wander off and his mind went completely blank once again. 

He didn’t want to go back to the funeral home, he wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Jay just yet like he had been with Brian. He wasn’t ready at-

He froze in his thoughts as his eyes spot something familiar in the woods, something tan that looked soft at the same time. His heart leaped to his chest as he took a deep breath and for once he let himself chase after this feeling.

Brian’s body was never found, unlike Jay’s, The casket had been empty.

His heart rate picked up even more as he felt hope course through him while he ran after the familiar-looking hoodie that seemed to always just be out of reach as he went deeper and deeper into the woods.

The trees seemed to get taller and taller the deeper he ran but no closer did he make it to the hooded figure who only appeared to be walking. He pressed himself to go harder and faster until finally his lack of exercise and other bad habits caused him to be weak. He pushed himself until he finally couldn’t push himself anymore and felt his bad leg give way and his lungs forcing him to heave up any air that he had wanted to keep within him. Coughs, heavy and wet, coursed through him as he shivers on the ground he had collapsed upon. His sight went in and out as he just tries to breathe again and get his ears to hear something other than his heartbeat racing in his chest. 

He didn’t notice the sound of twigs snapping from around him getting closer. He didn’t notice that he had been picked up, picked up by something, someone, and was now no longer on the forest floor. He didn’t notice a lot of things that he should have, that the cloth he was currently clutching onto for dear life held dried blood on it and was the exact same shade of tan that Brian’s hoodie was. He didn’t notice that every time he moved the person carrying him would pause and hold their breath as their gloved hands clutched onto him tighter and tighter until they finally deemed it okay enough to walk again. He didn’t notice the plastic Halloween mask that he had fought so hard to get rid of was now securely on his face nor the soft hums of a lullaby he once knew flowing effortlessly from the other person’s lips. He didn’t notice a lot of things, and maybe, for most of them, he didn’t care enough to.

Not when his breathing was becoming normal once again. Not when the man fought to put him back down at the tree he had first rested against. He felt as though he was no longer in control of his body, which at this point in his life he knew that he rarely was. He didn’t know why he wanted to hold onto the stranger who carried him back to this tree but he did, he felt safe there, safe in his arms, safer than he felt anywhere in the years, but he had to let go.

He had to let go of him and as he does so he finally let his eyes completely close once more. He felt the warmth of whoever held him leave him one final time as his body slumps over and the footsteps of the other fade away.

He doesn’t know what happens next, he doesn’t know how he opened his eyes or how he ended up in Brian’s old bed, but he was there now, and his eyes stung from tears he couldn’t remember. 

He had let go of Brian, and, now as he stared at the pair of masks clutched to his chest, one white and plastic, and the other an old black t-shirt with red eyes and a frown, he knew the other Tim did too. They could let go now, The hooded figure and Brian were gone and they could breathe again.


End file.
